Mead has a long and fascinating history, dating back at least 4,000 years. It was one of the first alcoholic drinks ever created, believed to have been discovered accidentally when wild yeast fermented honey and water in beehives. Ancient civilisations including the Vikings, Egyptians, Greeks, and Chinese prized mead for both its flavour and its supposed medicinal and divine properties.

The Rigveda, an ancient Hindu text from around 1500–1000 BCE, mentions a honey-based beverage similar to mead. In ancient Greece, mead was revered as the nectar of the gods. Vikings and Germanic tribes consumed it during feasts and ceremonies.

Viking women were renowned for their skills in making mead, and it was a craft passed down through generations.

The Norse connection to mead runs deep — the word “mead” itself derives from Old English and Proto-Germanic roots, and mead-halls were the grand gathering places where Viking feasts and celebrations took place.

Mead’s popularity spread across Europe during the Bronze Age, with various regions developing their own unique recipes and traditions. Monasteries became centers of honey wine production, refining the art and techniques of brewing. As the centuries passed, mead’s popularity waned in favor of beer and wine — a shift rooted not in taste but in necessity, as grain became more readily available than honey in many regions.

Today mead is back.

The mead market brought in 432 million USD in 2020 and is projected to reach 1.6 billion dollars by 2028 — a projected rise of 18% in the world beverage market.

Meaderies are opening across the United States and Europe, and session meads — lighter, lower-alcohol, carbonated styles — are bringing entirely new audiences to the category.

How Is Mead Made?

The basic process is simpler than beer brewing but requires patience.

Step 1 — The must
Honey is diluted with water to create what meadmakers call the must. The ratio of honey to water determines the final sweetness and alcohol content of the mead. More honey means more potential alcohol and more residual sweetness.

Step 2 — Adding yeast
Yeast is added to begin fermentation.

Unlike beer brewing where a lot of the work is done extracting sugars from malt, honey is a naturally occurring sugar and requires no processing to ferment other than diluting with water.

Mead uses champagne or wine yeast rather than ale yeast.

Step 3 — Fermentation
The yeast consumes the natural sugars in the honey, converting them to alcohol. Fermentation can take anywhere from a few weeks to several months depending on the style and the meadmaker’s approach.

Step 4 — Aging and bottling

Some meads improve significantly with time while others are designed to be enjoyed straight away.

Barrel-aged meads can spend months or years in oak, whiskey, or bourbon barrels developing complex secondary flavors that have nothing to do with honey.

Optional additions
Fruits, spices, herbs, hops, and other ingredients can be added at various stages to create the many styles and variants covered below.

The Main Types of Mead

Most people think mead is just honey wine, but the world’s oldest fermented beverage offers an incredible spectrum of flavors that craft beer and spirits simply can’t match.

Here are the styles you’re most likely to encounter:

Traditional Mead

Traditional mead is the purest form — made simply from honey, water, and yeast. The flavour depends on the type of honey used, from light and floral to dark and toasty. It can be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet, still or sparkling. Traditional mead allows you to taste the true essence of honey itself.

Melomel — Fruit Mead

Any mead made with fruit is called a melomel.

A cyser is mead made with apple juice or cider instead of water, combining the gentle sweetness of honey with the crisp tartness of apples.

Crafted Artisan Meadery’s Warhammer — one of the meads on tap at The Twisted Vine — is a cyser with apple mead, blueberry, light oak, and vanilla notes at 6% ABV.

Metheglin — Spiced Mead

Metheglin is a spiced mead flavoured with herbs and spices such as cinnamon, ginger, or cloves.

The name comes from Welsh and historically referred to medicinal preparations of honey and herbs. Modern metheglins focus on flavor balance — spices that complement rather than overwhelm the honey base.

Bochet — Caramelized Honey Mead

A bochet is a mead where the honey is caramelized or burned separately before adding the water, yielding toffee, caramel, chocolate, and toasted marshmallow flavors.

One of the most distinctive mead styles — if you enjoy dark beers or bourbon you’ll likely love bochet.

Braggot — Mead and Beer Hybrid

Braggot is mead made with hops and grains.

It sits between beer and mead — sharing characteristics of both. An excellent gateway mead for craft beer drinkers who want to explore without straying too far from familiar territory.

Pyment — Mead and Grape

A pyment is mead made with grapes or blended with wine. It tends to be rich, rounded, and similar in body to dessert wines or sweet whites, but with a softer finish. The mix of grape sugars and honey creates a velvety texture and layered flavour that appeals to both wine and mead drinkers.

Sack Mead — High Strength

Sack mead is traditional mead but with a higher alcohol content, ranging from 14 to 20 percent ABV.

Rich, warming, and meant to be sipped slowly. Think of it the way you’d approach a dessert wine or port.

Session Mead — The New Wave

Session meads are lower-alcohol, often carbonated, and highly accessible.

Consumers are shifting toward unique, natural alternatives to traditional beer and wine, driven by the popularity of session meads.

Crafted Artisan Meadery specializes in session meads — their lineup is built for people who want to enjoy mead the way they enjoy craft beer, with multiple pours over an evening rather than a single deliberate glass.

How Does Mead Compare to Wine and Beer?

This is the question most first-timers ask. Here’s the straightforward comparison:

Mead vs Wine
Both are fermented, both can be dry or sweet, both are served in similar glassware. The key difference is the base — grapes for wine, honey for mead. Mead tends to have a smoother, rounder texture than most wines and a distinctly floral quality that comes directly from the honey. If you enjoy white wine, prosecco, or dessert wines you’ll almost certainly find a mead style you love.

Mead vs Beer
Beer uses grains and hops. Mead uses honey. Session meads occupy similar ABV territory to craft beer and are equally sessionable. The flavor profile is fundamentally different — mead doesn’t have the bitterness of hops unless it’s a braggot. Craft beer drinkers who are tired of bitterness often find session mead a revelation.

Mead vs Cider
Closest relatives. Both fermented, both light and often fruit-forward in session styles. The key difference is the base — apples for cider, honey for mead. Cyser blends the two. If you love cider you will almost certainly love session mead.

How to Drink Mead

Temperature
Still traditional meads are best served slightly chilled — around 55°F, similar to white wine. Session meads are typically served cold like craft beer. Sack meads can be served at room temperature to let their complexity open up.

Glassware
Wine glasses work perfectly for still meads. Tulip glasses work well for sparkling session meads. Some traditionalists prefer a goblet or tankard — which is entirely appropriate at a D&D table.

What to eat with mead
Mead pairs exceptionally well with cheese boards, charcuterie, and roasted meats. Fruit meads pair naturally with desserts that feature the same fruit. Bochet meads pair well with dark chocolate. Session meads work with almost anything — treat them like you’d treat craft beer pairings.

Sweetness Levels — What to Expect

A mead may be dry, semi-sweet, or sweet. Sweetness simply refers to the amount of residual sugar in the mead. Dry meads do not have to be bone dry — they can have some body. Sweet meads should not be cloyingly sweet and should not have a raw, unfermented honey character.

Dry — Little to no residual sugar. Crisp, clean, and refreshing. Best for wine drinkers who prefer dry whites.

Semi-sweet — Balanced between dry and sweet. The most approachable style for newcomers. Most session meads fall here.

Sweet — Noticeable honey sweetness throughout. Best enjoyed in smaller pours, like a dessert wine.

If you’re trying mead for the first time, start semi-sweet. It gives you the best introduction to what honey fermentation actually tastes like without overwhelming sweetness or dryness.

The Mead Revival — Why Now?

In a world brimming with artisanal beverages and craft brews, mead holds a unique place, straddling the realms of history, mythology, and modern resurgence with an elegance few other drinks can boast. Today, meaderies are leveraging modern winemaking techniques to produce meads that are arguably the best the world has ever seen, offering an unprecedented range of flavors and styles.

The timing makes sense. Craft beer culture trained a generation of drinkers to seek out interesting, complex beverages with real stories behind them. Mead fits that perfectly — it has a history stretching back thousands of years, a genuinely unique production process, and a flavor profile that can’t be replicated by anything else. The rise of D&D, fantasy gaming, Viking pop culture, and the broader “cottagecore” and historical interest movements have all contributed to mead’s renewed cultural moment.

For the gaming community specifically — the connection between mead and the worlds people play in is instinctive. When you’re three hours into a D&D campaign and you reach for something to drink, mead just makes sense.

The Mead Selection at The Twisted Vine

The Twisted Vine at Skillshotz Gaming in Deerfield Beach carries one of the most thoughtfully curated mead selections in South Florida — two distinct brands representing two completely different approaches to the world’s oldest drink.

Dansk brings authentic Danish Viking mead tradition. Products like Viking Blod, Odin Skull, Klapojster, Ribe Mjod, and Vikingernes Mjod represent centuries of Scandinavian mead heritage. These are traditional, heritage-driven meads with real Old World character. Strong, complex, and deeply tied to the Viking history that D&D and fantasy gaming culture draws from.

Crafted Artisan Meadery from Mogadore, Ohio brings modern American craft mead. Their session mead lineup — including Warhammer and Dragon Heart — is built for accessibility and creativity. Approachable for newcomers and interesting enough for experienced mead drinkers.

We also offer mead flights — 2oz and 4oz pours — so you can explore both traditions side by side before committing to a full pour.

Try Mead at Skillshotz Gaming

If you’ve never tried mead before, The Twisted Vine is one of the best places to start in South Florida. Our staff can walk you through the selection, recommend a style based on what you already drink, and pour you a flight if you want to explore before committing to a full glass.

Come find us at 616 SE 10th Street in Deerfield Beach. We’re open Tuesday through Friday from 5:30 PM and Saturday through Sunday from 2:00 PM. Contact us if you have questions about our current mead selection or want to know what’s on tap.